(1) What is your home airport? JNB but cold well be either London, NYC, BOS or ORD from next year.
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Y fro personal J for business.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? >50k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? BAEC Gold (OW Emerald), Virgin red (but with 160k miles) and Flying Blue silver.
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Free lounge access and good award redemption rates.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often LON-JNB, JNB-CPT and LON-NYC
(7) Preferred Airlines - British Airways
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Travel quarterly transcontinentally for work, typically have to pay for wife and child so try to use redemptions for them.

I am BA gold and have just reached my rnewal limit but am unlikely to reach a 2,500 tier points this year and get a 2-4-1 voucher.

I have the following star alliance flights booked:

SFO-YYZ in business with Air Canada
YYZ-BOS in economy with United
CPH-ZUR in economy with Swiss
ZUR-GVA in economy with Swiss
GVA-PAR/LON in economy with swiss
JNB-EBB (entebbe) in business with South African airlines return

I also have the following optional flights which I can push through either BA (and get the avios which we use regularly), or through an *A member to build membership.

JNB-LHR in business return
LHR-SYD in business return
A couple of JNB-CPT in economy.
LHR-FRA in economy x3

My key goals would be:
- Obtain status to get lounge access when we fly personally
- Be able to actually use thepoints for redemption (I find the points I've had with Lufthansa, perhaps 30k are useless)
- Be in a situation were ideally my wife can use the points on a "family account" as we can at BA.

So key questions:

With this in mind, which do you think is the best airline to join the *AA with?
Is it worth putting the optional flights through *A or just stick to BA to keep the points consilidated and built up - on routes that we regularly use?
Which *A airline would you use to travel LON-SYD if i go that route?

Many thanks in advance!